Standing up to Fox News, Not Putin

Donald J. Trump was insulted by Fox News chief Roger Ailes and says he will hold an alternative event rather than participate in Thursday night’s debate. But why won’t Trump stand up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin? A series of pro-Putin remarks by a potential leader of the Free World is a far more serious matter than whether Megyn Kelly is given the opportunity to question Trump.

The Trump-Putin relationship has been labeled a “bromance” involving two men who have a fondness for one another. It is very strange, considering that Putin runs a regime that has invaded Ukraine, intervened in Syria, and has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the United States. Russian government and media officials regularly threaten to incinerate the U.S.

Ironically, on the same day Trump was pulling out of a debate sponsored by Fox News, he was on the Fox Business Network telling anchor Maria Bartiromo that Putin “hasn’t been convicted of anything,” in reference to the British report that Putin’s regime killed KGB dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London. “Have they found him guilty? I don’t think they’ve found him guilty. They say a lot of things about me that are untrue, too.” The 329-page report said Putin “probably” ordered the hit, using the standard of probable cause in a case where direct eyewitness evidence was not forthcoming from the Moscow regime. A former KGB spy who ran the KGB’s successor, the FSB, Putin had to be directly involved in such a plot, carried out by Russian intelligence on British soil. After all, Putin rules the country like a virtual dictator.

Trump, who is quick to make charges and accusations against his political opponents in the U.S., had previously said, “I haven’t seen any evidence that he [Putin] killed anybody, in terms of reporters.”

Litvinenko’s murder in 2006 by radiation poisoning followed the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot four times, once in the head. She was the target of a failed poisoning attempt in 2004.

Trump, who claims to be a real conservative, has openly emerged as Putin’s preferred candidate and boasts about his endorsement from Putin, saying, “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” The remarks gave new meaning to the term “dupe,” or “agent of influence.” Putin had said about Trump, “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt—an outstanding and talented personality.”

The back-and-forth remarks of mutual admiration raise serious questions about whether Trump, if he is elected president, would be a security risk.

A savvy businessman, Trump is certainly not dumb. His attacks on political correctness and media bias have been applauded by conservatives. He’s been critical of Communist China’s trade practices and illegal immigration. On Russia, however, he acts like a propagandist for the Putin regime.

We have cited reports dating back to 1987, during the time of the old Soviet Union, demonstrating that Trump has been seeking business in Russia and attempting to build a “Russian Trump Tower” in Moscow. One of Trump’s contacts was Russian billionaire Araz Agalarov and his company, Crocus Group. He owned Crocus City Hall, where Trump’s Miss Universe finals were held in 2013. Crocus Group had been participating in real estate talks with Trump. A member of the Kremlin elite, Agalarov was given an outstanding citizen award by Putin at a ceremony held in the Kremlin. He has been called “The Donald Trump of Russia.” At a news conference in Moscow and a subsequent interview, Trump himself talked about how business was “booming” in Russia. “I mean, you look at what’s going on in Russia, in Moscow, you look at how it’s just booming and how well it does,” he said.

Clearly, Trump was fascinated by Russia’s economic opportunities.

But does Trump’s enthusiasm for Putin’s Russia go beyond business opportunities?

At his news conference on Tuesday, where he declared that he would drop out of the Fox debate, Trump was asked by CNN reporter Sara Murray about his attacking Bill Clinton over marital infidelity, and whether Trump’s own marital infidelity was an appropriate topic. “You can bring up whatever you want to bring up,” he said.

Since he extended the invitation, it would appear that Trump’s indifference to the evidence of the evil deeds of the Putin regime means that he has no knowledge of the KGB’s use of the “honey-trap.” As explained by former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, “In America, in the West, occasionally you ask your men to stand up for their country. In Russia, we just ask our young women to lay down.” Former FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi told the BBC that sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman was getting “closer and closer” to seducing a sitting member of President Obama’s cabinet. She was arrested and deported from the U.S. The documentary, “Russian Spies—Deceitful Beauties,” examines how Russia uses beautiful women to steal information and intelligence. One case involves a young Russian woman, Katia Zatuliveter, an alleged “honey-trap” spy in London who later went to work for the Russia Today (RT) propaganda channel. She denied being a spy, but former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky said the 25-year-old woman was working undercover for Russian foreign intelligence, the SVR, and gathering information about British naval bases around the world.

One might say Trump’s personal life is his own, except for the fact that he has attacked Bill Clinton’s personal life and talks in his book, Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life, about the women he has “dated” over the years, including “the top models and most beautiful women in the world.” Trump, who has been married three times, wrote, “I have been able to date (screw) them all because I have something that many men do not have.”

The author of four books, including The Longest Romance: The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro, Humberto Fontova suggests that ego is the explanation for Trump’s behavior and statements on Russia. He quotes KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov as saying back in 1985, “Ego-centric people who lack moral principles—who are either too greedy or who suffer from exaggerated self-importance. These are the people the KGB wants and finds easiest to recruit.”

Whatever the explanation, Trump’s pandering to Putin has to be addressed. As part of the National Review cover story headlined, “Against Trump,” former chief assistant U.S. attorney Andrew C. McCarthy commented that Trump did not have “a clue” about dealing with the problem of global terrorism, other than “leaving it in Vladimir Putin’s nefarious hands.” But how did this happen? Where do these views come from?

Serious journalists can’t sweep this matter under the rug.

Before he makes even more astonishingly ignorant statements about Putin’s Russia, Trump ought to take some time to read the British inquiry into the Litvinenko murder. Litvinenko was a target of his former comrades in the KGB because he exposed Russian links to organized crime, and even al-Qaeda. However, another possible motive in the murder was an article Litvinenko wrote claiming Putin was a pedophile. The article said:

After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin? Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile [sic]. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute…

Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for the presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.

The odd spectacle of Putin quickly pulling up a boy’s white tank-top and kissing his belly raised eyebrows worldwide at the time it happened. Litvinenko had put the strange display in perspective. Putin claimed it was a spontaneous gesture of affection. “I wanted to cuddle him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. He seemed so nice,” Putin said. On the other hand, Putin wants to appear macho. He rides horses while bouncing his bare chest for the cameras, and has posed shirtless while fishing.

In addition to his involvement in the Litvinenko case, questions are being raised about the mysterious death of Putin’s former media adviser in Washington, D.C. It appears that Mikhail Lesin, the founder of Russian propaganda channel Russia Today, was stealing money from Russia and laundering it in the United States. He was under pressure to inform to U.S. authorities about corruption by the Putin regime.

In that regard, the BBC Panorama show has run a program on “Putin’s Secret Riches,” noting how he gets a $100,000 a year salary but lives like a member of the super-rich. It is estimated that he is worth $40 billion.

Not surprisingly, RT is now featuring a story about how Putin is cracking down on corruption in Russia. Putin has even formed a Presidential Anti-Corruption Council.

Does Trump also deny that Putin is corrupt? If so, perhaps we know where Trump is getting his information about Russia. After all, his long-time adviser, Roger Stone, became a favorite of RT when Stone wrote a book using a KGB agent of influence as a source and accusing President Lyndon Johnson of ordering the murder of President John F. Kennedy.